Topsy Turvy World

The following post is by TDV Managing Editor, Redmond Weissenberger,
and is excerpted from this week's TDV Dispatch. To read the Dispatch and
other TDV subscriber-only publications, please
subscribe here.

Sometimes seems like we live in a topsy-turvy world. NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden has been granted temporary
asylum in the former home of the Proletariat Revolution, while the Home
of the Brave's government desperately wants his scalp. Three decades ago,
this was unheard of. Communist Russia was supposed to be a place of tyranny
and surveillance. Uncle Sam was supposed to leave his citizens in peace.
Now the roles have been flipped as Putin's Russia is taking in political
refugees attempting to outrun the grip of the American state.

The Snowden leaks have proven a few things. First, the United States government
- like all monopoly states - can't be trusted with uninhibited power. Second,
Washington's political class only considers whistleblowers innocent if they
don't embarrass the guys in charge. And third, there is a panopticon spying
program, enforced by the American government, operating worldwide. Prior
to the Snowden disclosure, it was only a crank rumor (one constantly stated
at TDV) that bureaucrats were keeping tabs on everyone. Now we know for sure
and the mainstream media can no longer deny it.

The latest revelation, via
the intrepid Glenn Greenwald, is that the National Security Agency
is capturing every American's private phone and email records, regardless
of if they are corresponding with someone outside the country. The current
law requires analysts to obtain a warrant from a secret court if they
plan to snoop through the domestic files of an American citizen. But
the NSA's XKeyscore program allows users easy access to data whether
a warrant has been obtained or not. We are supposed to believe that the
cherubic and harmless NSA agents check with their conscience when they
decide to look up phone records.

If history is any guide, only a boob would truly believe the US government
would refrain from engaging in nefarious acts. For decades, the American
state has been using force and violence to intimidate the globe. The Church
Committee revelations in the '70s showed that intelligence agencies attempted
to assassinate various government leaders throughout the world - including
using the mafia to rub out Fidel Castro. Operation Mockingbird - the CIA
propaganda program aimed at major media outlets - operated on domestic shores
to make public opinion susceptible to warmongering. The US intelligence state
has a record of transgressions, yet the people are told to put their trust
in a confidential court and shadowy analysts.

The vast metadata collection was one thing. But the new XKeyscore program
makes it incredibly easy for government officials to look up the correspondences
of everyone residing in the US and its puppet states. This is a terrifying
new development in the era of the rising police state. For now, assume everything
you post or write on the internet is being collected. We have no reason to
believe the government will do the right thing.

Redmond Weissenberger is the Managing Editor of The Dollar Vigilante and the
Founding Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada, the centre
for the study of the Austrian School of Economics within Canada.

Redmond founded the LvMIC in 2010 to address the lack of knowledge about the
true cause of our booms and busts of the last 100 years and the need for sound
money and sound economics to be applied to the Canadian and global economy.